All you need is trust
by Mansah
Summary: Veronica doesn't do trust, but then there was Piz. Logan muses on trust and his relationship with Veronica post the video debacle but before the cafeteria fight, 3x20


This is my first VM fanfiction (because as usual I get into the game late). Any comments and criticism is wildly appreciated.

Disclaimer: I don't own anything.

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You don't say it but it hurts you a little the way she swoops to defend him, the way she doesn't for one second believe it could be him. (Actually it hurts you a lot). If memory serves correctly (and it does, because the time you spent together has been etched on your brain down to the last detail) it's a courtesy she never accorded you even once. Your relationship is riddled with testaments to the fact; a show-and-tell on how to do mistrust. You know you were never exactly a spotless Prince Charming and you've made your share of mistakes. (Maybe more than your share). Bad hook-ups, covering for friends at the wrong time, the usual boy stuff she never could let go. Whatever you did she would be sure to call you out. She might have said that she trusted you (and for a short time you really believed she did), you might have begged her to let it lie but sooner or later she would get to the truth, find you out. Veronica Mars could never stop digging. (Somewhere at the back of your mind there's that niggling memory of a drunken phone call plea for tolerance she never once acknowledged). That hurts too.

Then there are the bigger things; events placed under the category 'denial'.

Are you the only one to think an involuntary pornographic video gone viral shares some parallels with the former occasions? Episodes where circumstantial evidence pointed towards you. If she'd given you half the trust she apparently gives Piz it would have been another world but all you remember is being avoided then accused time and again. Guilty 'til proven innocent. There's a sarcastic 'Okay, you've convinced me, bygones' lurking somewhere at the back of your mind; the unpleasant recollection that once she thought you capable of rape. (It's there right next to the knowledge that she has thought you capable of worse. The sinking feeling you get when you realise you're the prime suspect in a murder case because of information given by your girlfriend is a sensation you hope you'll never have to relive.) The sour taste of bile in your mouth just now is the unfortunate aftertaste that inevitably follows from remembering. Always.

You accepted it because as she said, she was built that way and you saw the evidence; no one's ever really been above her scrutiny when she was involved in a case. Veronica Mars trusts no one unconditionally, except perhaps her dad. Fact; there's a part of you that admires the dogged way she'll follow a story to its end no matter the consequences; judge each lead on its own terms and keep each clue in the air until it has been proven or refuted incontrovertibly. So you could get past it even when she had you arrested for murdering Lilly because you knew that that's what she does. Investigate first, defend later. Judgement based on objective fact not blind faith in the goodness of people. What it taught you was that earning the trust of Veronica Mars must be one of the most precious things; rare and covetable and difficult to obtain. What you realised was that sometime before you died you had to win that trust. (And maybe that pledge became just a little more important each time distrust and jealousy strained your relationship that much further.) If distrust was destruction then trust must be creation. It's the closest thing to a scientific proof you've ever conceived. (And maybe you have been placing too much hope on trust; maybe it has gained this horrid sense of a relational dynamic: Get her trust you get the girl enter happily ever after). Somehow (unconsciously) you've been guided by this rule since the beginning.

So you try to win her trust through protection and confessions. When words fail (and they fail often with her because she's too jaded to listen; put up her guard before you've even finished your declaration) you try to do the physical. Become reliable as the guy who smashes her enemies when they're beyond her reach. Try to swoop in and save her as many times as it takes until she realises that this reliance on you to be there in a bad situation could be but another name for trust. Try to act the hero because it's all you have left when you're supposed to be only friends. You have to believe that one day she'll realise that Logan equals protection equals trust equals love equals happily ever after.

So yes, it hurts a little to see that belief dashed. The mathematical formula disproven; protection equals distrust equals destruction. (But you have to believe that it's simply that you made the equation wrong because the alternative is that she's Piz' now and that's just not acceptable). She's known Piz for less than a year and yet here she is: trusting him, loving him? There she is defending him like she never defended you before facts had cleared you. There she is telling you to mind your own business because she trusts him. There she is scoffing at your protection; telling you once more she doesn't trust you (is there any other way you can interpret the 'out of my life' part of the conversation?). There he is getting for free what you've never yet managed to win.

You won't say it but it hurts a little. (A lot). The fact that she trusts him when she never trusted you.


End file.
